Current Attraction Strategies

Primary Industries have historically tended to rely on existing family members and local labour supplemented by seasonal workers. There have been limited efforts to actively promote various industry sectors to attract labour but until recently these efforts have largely been uncoordinated. Hindering appropriate action has been a lack of emphasis in Regional Development on developing regional policies to promote their localities as a desirable place to live and work.

Principal amongst these issues is a general lack of housing, suitable community services such as child care and some limitations in recreational options due principally to a small population base. This is accentuated in more remote regional localities with very few facilities or services although better housing arrangements than in many larger regional centres. Some regional communities also have difficulty assimilating workers from different regional areas and cultural backgrounds.

Even though there are some activities being undertaken to address these requirements, many regional communities and especially small and remote regional communities do not have the ability to attract workers and coupled with a generally lower wage regime, the industry has had to engage in better marketing for labour as well as actively improving the image of the industry and its career opportunities. The industry is currently in the process of adopting competitive recruitment and retention strategies to overcome some of these impediments.

There are also a number of strategies being pursued with regard to unemployed and under-employed workers but the bulk of these workers reside in urban areas with little desire to move to regional areas or undertake primary industry jobs. To compound the problem, Centrelink has a policy of not supporting unemployed people moving to areas of low employment and penalises those who move to such areas. This acts as a clear disincentive for any unemployed person to consider a career in primary industries.

With few clear career pathways into regional areas for urban based job-seekers and few mechanisms to support job investigation in regional areas, there is little to suggest that any significant number of unemployed persons can be attracted to regional primary industry jobs.

Concentrations of unemployed people in major regional centres such as Murray Bridge and Mount Gambier may provide some regional labour to the primary industry sector but in many instances the distances involved between residential and work locations are often prohibitive, with a lack of any transportation a major impediment.

The numbers of unemployed in regional areas are also relatively small with a total of just under 9300 in the two major South Australian regional statistical divisions of Northern and Western and Southern and Eastern as at May 2006.

The expectation is that a maximum figure of 1500 people can be attracted to the primary industries sector from the State labour market within the next 3 years. This however, must be seen in the context of continuing labour force losses which are conservatively estimated to be 14,000 by 2012 based on recent labour force trend losses.

The average annual labour force loss in this model is about 2300 persons although this figure will vary from year to year. Disturbingly, the 2005/6 labour force figure to May 2006 in the two major statistical divisions was a loss of 4409 workers which was abnormally high. The pull of mining industry employment continues to drain many workers from primary industries and further substantial growth forecasts for mining, especially the Roxby Downs development, is expected to result in a continuation of higher labour losses in the short to medium term.

While there will be some labour efficiencies through larger farm holdings and improved technologies which may impact on future labour demand to a degree, there is now a very real expectation of a serious labour force loss within five years and a critical shortage of labour within ten years and possibly as soon as seven years. In this new highly competitive regional labour market, the shortfall can only be met by migration.

The workers of the 21st Century will often have to deal with a much wider range of work competencies and require more responsive change management support. The capacity of the existing training system to deal effectively with this demand will impact upon the capacity to attract and retain labour. The Primary Industries Skills Council in South Australia is conducting a major project to investigate this need.

However, the largest issue facing the industry is the shortage of labour in all sectors. Realistically, this will not be able to be filled by strategies designed to engage the unemployed or under-employed. These will have a marginal effect at best and the only potential source of real numbers to meet demand is through migration.